Description

Howard Fast's life, from a rough-and-tumble Jewish New York street kid to the rich and famous author of close to 100 books, rivals the Horatio Alger myth. Author of bestsellers such as Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, My Glorious Brothers, and Spartacus, Fast joined the American Communist Party in 1943 and remained a loyal member until 1957, despite being imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Gerald Sorin illuminates the connections among Fast's Jewishness, his writings, and his left-wing politics and explains Fast’s attraction to the Party and the reasons he stayed in it as long as he did. Recounting the story of his private and public life with its adventure and risk, love and pain, struggle, failure, and success, Sorin also addresses questions such as the relationship between modern Jewish identity and radical movements, the consequences of political myopia, and the complex interaction of art, popular culture, and politics in 20th-century America.

Author Bio

Gerald Sorin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American and Jewish Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is author of Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent, winner of the 2003 National Jewish Book Award in History and The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880-1920 (IUP, 1985).

Reviews

Sorin brings Fast's personality to life in a way that is both sympathetic and critical. The narrative is fluid and engaging.An engaging account of Fast that pays attention not only to his politics but also to his writings. . . . It should stimulate discussion of the appeal of Communism for some American Jews in the mid-20th century.Winner, 2012 National Jewish Book Awards, Biography, Autobiography, Memoir Silver Medal winner, Biography category, 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards

Customer Reviews

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction1 Paradise Postponed Publish or Perish Politics Delayed2 The War Against Fascism The Fatal Embrace The Reds and the Blacks3 The Life of the Party Innocent Abroad The Road Not Taken The Politics of Literature4 Cold War, Hot Seat The Discouraged American Down and Out in the USA5 Banned, Barred, and Beseiged It Can’t Happen Here War and Peace6 The Myopia of American Communism Foley Square Follies Waltzing at the Waldorf April in Paris The Poison of Peekskill7 Literature and Reality Howard Fast: Prisoner Great Expectations8 Free! But Not at Last9 Trials and Tribulations Despair, Distraction, and Defeat The Push and Pull of Politics Confrontations Left and Right10 McCarthyism, Stalinism, and the World according to Fast11 Culture and the Cold War To Flee or not to Flee An Even Brighter Star in the USSR Signs of Thaw in the Cold War?12 Things Fall Apart; the Left Doesn’t Hold13 Fast Forward14 Life in the Fast Lane California to the New York Island Looking Backward, Seeing Red15 Fast and Loose Disappointment and Despair Fast in Pursuit16 Fall and DeclineNotes Index